Apple appointed Susan L Wagner to their board of directors yesterday and people have been contacting me to ask if that is the same BlackRock I once worked at. in the 1990's. The answer is yes! Here is the announcement: CUPERTINO, California—July 17, 2014—Apple® today announced that Susan L. Wagner, founding partner and director of […]

Remember Emanuel Rosen? Author of Anatomy of Buzz and Anatomy of Buzz Revisited? He is out with a new book entitled Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information with co-author Itamar Simonson. To me, the book is a highly thoughtful trip down the changes of the Internet and the […]

Paul Oyer, Professor of Economics in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, has written an extremely thought provoking book entitled Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned From Online Dating available on Harvard Business Review Press. The book is an extremely fun read and I really enjoyed interacting with Paul […]

Daniel Isenberg has likely written one of the most important books on entrepreneurship I’ve ever seen. It is not about pitch decks or pitching venture capitalists for funding. The book entitled, Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value, actually discusses something far more important, the stories of people who had […]

IRCE 2013 again had a jammed packed expo hall full of the best vendors in ecommerce. One of the first companies I encountered was Riskified. Riskified was one of the most unique new offerings that improves customer experience and business performance while reducing merchant risk that I saw at IRCE2013. Eido Gal is passionate about […]

At the back of John Warrillow’s Built to Sell, I saw a book mentioned as a must read. That book is Brand : It ain’t the logo*. The asterisk stands for “It’s what people think of you.” This perspective matches and aligns with my own views quite closely. After a short chat with Ted Matthews […]

I was sent a copy of Brett King’s new book Bank 3.0 a few weeks back. Good reading on timely topics. Brett was nice enough to share some thoughts with me in an interview. So what is new in Bank 3.0? Brett King: Bank 2.0 was really about the challenges of shifting from branch-centric to […]

I'm continually amazed by the number of people who skip text and bypass words and text altogether. I came across an amazing inadvertent and automated example on the National Weather Service Chicago website regarding this Sunday's weather forecast. As you can see the graphical representation says Sunday will have […]

John Mackey came to Chicago Wednesday and gave a powerful , paradign-shifting soul-awakening speech about his new book Conscious Capitalism to the Economic Club of Chicago. The event was led by John A Canning Jr., Chairman of Madison Dearborn Partners. Question and answers were moderated by Mary Ann Childers. Later, I attended a second event […]

On Friday evening I was a guest on The Jim Bohannon Show to discuss my blog post Will Hurricane Sandy (1-175-485) Again Demonstrate Need to Enhance Saffir-Simpson Scale? It was such a pleasure to be on his show, he's a true professional. You can find a link to the archived recording here. During the interview he mentioned […]

Hurricane Ike killed 112 (per Wikipedia) in the United States in 2008, most due to the storm surge. At the time I wrote a blog post advocating an enhancement to the Saffir-Simpson Scale to improve the risk assessment and public communication tool. With Hurricane Sandy bearing down on the New Jersey coast, I thought it […]

What is true leadership? Keynote speaker Robyn Benincasa leads by example. Robyn Benincasa dropped me a copy of her newly minted New York Times bestselling book entitled How Winning Works : 8 Essential Leadership Lessons from the Toughest Teams on Earth (Harlequin). I’m really glad she did! As you know I read lots and lots […]

The nice folks at McGraw-Hill sent me a freshly minted copy of Ro Khanna’s new book Entrepreneurial Nation : Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America’s Future. As someone who would like to help the CEOs and board of directors transform the sales and marketing of America’s manufacturers to make them into international growth companies, […]

Recently, I had the great pleasure of hosting a podcast with Jeffrey J. Fox on Total Picture Radio. Over the years, Jeffrey's books have been a tremendously positive influence on me. He did the crisp and clear short book to perfection before it became fashionable and without losing meaning. As I study the book business […]

New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely recently released another thought-provoking book, The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves. Dan was kind enough to answer some questions. If you are not familiar with Dan, you should read his bio fully so that you understand the unique life experiences that […]

Recently I read Roberta Chinsky Matuson’s Suddenly in Charge: Managing Up, Managing Down and Succeeding All Around(Niocolas Brealey). Really unique book, especially the managing up part, as I’ve never seen extensive writing about that issue previously. Insightful stuff. Roberta was kind enough to grant an interview. In the chapter on Office Politics you mention the […]

In the highly anticipated follow up to The Mirror Test, Jeffrey Hayzlett now brings us Running the Gauntlet: Essential Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change, and Grow Profits due from McGraw-Hill in January 2012. Over the past few years I’ve gotten to know Jeffrey, he’s certainly a unique bird. He’s engaged me not only on […]

Last year Harvey Mackay visited Chicago for a media tour for his previous book last year and I got to travel from media outlet to media outlet with him for a day as he did so. The experience would be hard to describe beyond that it will never be forgotten as long as I live […]

Alan Weiss has written over 45 books. Absorb that for a minute. That is a heck of alot of books. His latest is Million Dollar Referrals (McGraw- Hill). A timely title about one of the most unique marketing art forms, referrals. Why timely? With constant changes in media and the rise of new channels such […]

This week there are stories raging in political circles with allegations the Newt Gingrich (or more likely his Internet strategists) bought or acquired Twitter followers. Seeing a concept I’ve seen whispered in the back of the room at Internet conferences being discussed in a broad and general way in Time magazine makes one wonder if […]

Photo by Flickr user rnpract. Congratulations to my blogging counterparts in Boston! The Boston Bruins Stanley Cup parade user generated content bonanza is underway! As you know last year the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup and they had a parade. I went downtown for the spectacle of madness. I was overwhelmed not only by […]

When I heard Tim Sanders was releasing a new leadership book called Today We Are Rich (Tyndale House Publishers), I immediately suggested an interview and he promptly sent me an unedited advance copy. The book starts with an amazingly positive story about his childhood with his grandmother, then migrates to a dark memoir about a […]

Last month I watched the coverage of the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake with amazement. When looking over the list of major earthquakes since 2005, it was the first with heavy damage to occur in a wealthy nation with lots of digital devices since the dawn of Youtube and user generated content(UGC) ability to share on […]

I've known Aaron Goldman since 2006 and he stands out as someone who has made himself accessible and friendly in the search engine community. Every few months we share a conversations about what we are both up to and aspire to, it is always fun. Aaron has encouraged me to continue evangelizing my message about […]

As you likely already know, David Meerman Scott and I have a lot in common. We both started our careers in the bond market and spent considerable time organizing and marketing financial market data to various audiences. Who knew we also shared a passion for music? David Meerman Scott actually maintains a database of the […]

Jim Sterne is a unique person in the interactive space. He cares not only about the multitude of marketing strategies, measurement and tactics, but the success of the people. Jim has been helpful to me in ways that are too long to list here and has cared more about the status of certain issues in […]

When I first saw the schedule for the 2010 BMA conference, I immediately noticed that Pat LaPointe from Marketing NPV was on the schedule. Was immediately excited about that as I had not seen him speak before but had heard many positive things. For those of you who don't know Pat LaPointe, his bio on […]

It is my pleasure to announce that I'm speaking at SMX Toronto 2010 on April 8th and April 9th. I'm quite pleased to participate in the following two sessions: Bring in the Love: Organizational Readiness and the Collaborative Work Environment For many organizations there’s a natural tension between the product group, IT and the marketing […]

Porters of Racine was founded in 1857 providing furniture of distinction well before Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States. My understanding of the history is that fine furniture was brought into port of Racine, Wisconsin and that people traveled from across the Midwest to Porters of Racine to purchase fine furniture. Fast forward […]

While doing research for my Porters of Racine post in Google's keyword external, I noticed that the keyword sets were large and that the keyword data for Kenosha furniture, Milwaukee furniture and Wisconsin furniture had interesting attributes. These keyword sets were not changed except to remove any query with the term terms implying outdoor furniture […]